“Oneness of the Tsar and the People, and of the People and the Tsar”

Published:Proletary, No. 14, August 29 (16), 1905.

      Published according to the text inProletary.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1972,

      Moscow,Volume 9,

      pages191-199.Translated:The Late Abraham Fineberg and Julius KatzerTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

InProletary, No.12, which appeared on August 3(16), we spoke
of the possibility of the Bulygin Duma being convened in the near future, and
analysed the tactics of Social- Democracy towards

				 it.[1]The Bulygin
scheme has now become law and the Manifesto of August 6 (19) has proclaimed that
a “State Duma” will be called “no later than mid-January
1906”.

Itis on the anniversary of January 9, when the St. Peters burg workers placed
the seal of their blood on the beginning of the revolution in Russia and showed
their determination to fight desperately for its victory—it is on the
anniversary of that great day that the tsar proposes to convene this grossly
faked, police-sifted assembly of landowners, capitalists, and a negligible
number of rich peasants who cringe to the authorities. The tsar intends to
consult this assembly as one consisting of representatives of the
people”. But the entire working class, all the millions of toilers and
those who are not householders are completely barred from the elections of the
“people’s representatives”. We shall wait and see whether the tsar
is right in banking thus on the impotence of the working class....

Untilthe revolutionary proletariat has armed itself and defeated the autocratic
government nothing more could have been expected than this sop to the big
bourgeoisie, one that costs the tsar nothing and commits him to nothing. Even
this sop would, probably, not have been given at this time, if the ominous
question of war or peace had not loomed large. Without consulting the landlords
and capitalists, the autocratic government does not venture either to impose on
the people the burden of the senseless continuation ofthe war, or to work out measures to shift the entire burden of paying for the
      war from the shoulders of the rich to the shoulders of the workers and
      peasants.

Asfor the provisions of the State Duma Act, they fully confirm our worst
expectations. It is not known as yet whether this Duma will actually be
convened. Such doles can easily be taken away again, and the autocratic monarchs
of every country have made and broken similar promises by the score. It is not
yet known to what extent this future Duma, if it meets at all and is not
wrecked, will be able to become the centre of really far-reaching political
agitation among the masses of the people, against the autocracy. But there can
be no doubt that the very provisions of the new State Duma Act furnish us with a
wealth of material with which to conduct agitation, explain the nature of the
autocracy, disclose its class basis, reveal the irreconcilability of its
interests with those of the people, and spread and popularise our
revolutionary-democratic demands. It may be stated without exaggeration that the
Manifesto and Act of August 6 (19) ought now to become avademecumto
every political agitator, every class-conscious worker, for it
faithfully reflects all the infamy, viciousness, Asiatic barbarity,
violence, and exploitation that pervade the whole social and political system of
Russia. Practically every sentence in the Manifesto and the Act provides
excellent basis for the most comprehensive and convincing political
commentaries, which will stimulate democratic thought and revolutionary
consciousness.

Asthe Russian saying runs: “Leave it alone and it won’t stink.” When one
reads the Manifesto and the State Duma Act one feels as though a mass of sewage
that has been accumulating since time immemorial were being stirred up under
one’s very nose.

Centuriesof oppression of the working people, the ignorance and downtrodden
state of the people, and the stagnation in economic life and all fields of
culture have enabled the autocracy to maintain its position. This formed the
background for the untrammelled development and hypocritical dissemination of
the doctrine of “the indissoluble oneness of the tsar and the people and
the oneness of the people and the tsar”, the doctrine that the tsar’s
autocraticpower stands above all social estates and classes of the nation, above the
division of the people into rich and poor, and expresses the general interests
of the entire nation. What we now have before us is apracticalattempt
to display this “oneness” in the most diffident and embryonic
fashion, through simpleconsultationwith the “elected
representatives of the whole of Russia”. And what do we see? We at once
see that “the oneness of the tsar and the people” is possible only
through the medium of an army of bureaucrats and policemen who see to it that
the muzzle put on the people is kept firmly in place. This “oneness” requires
that the people should not dare to open their mouths. By “people” is
meant only the landlords and capitalists, who are allowed to take part in the
two-stage elections (voting first for electors, by rural districts or city
wards, and these electors in their turn elect the members of the State
Duma). Peasanthouseholdersare classed among the people only after
having been sifted throughfour-stageelections, under the supervision
and with the assistance and instruction of the Marshals of the
Nobility,[3]the Rural Superintendents, and police officials. First the householders
elect members of the volost assembly; then the volost assemblies elect delegates
from the volosts, two from each assembly; then these volost delegates elect the
gubernia electors. Finally, the gubernia electors of the peasants, together with
the gubernia electors of the landlords and (urban) capitalists elect the members
of the State Duma! Almost everywhere the peasants constitute a
minority of the
gubernia electors. They are guaranteed the election of only one member of the
State Duma from each gubernia, who has to be a peasant, i.e., 51 seats out of
412 (in the 51 gubernias of European Russia).

Theentire urban working class, all the village poor, agricultural
labourers, and peasants who are not householders, take no part whatever in any
elections.

Theoneness of the tsar and the people is in effect the oneness of the tsar and
the landlords and capitalists, with a handful of rich peasants thrown in, and
with all elections placed under the strictest police control. Freedom of speech,
of the press, of assembly, and,of association, without which elections are a
mere farce, are not even mentioned.

TheState Duma has no rights whatever, for none of itsdecisions are binding, being merely of an advisory nature. All its decisions are
      submitted for consideration and approval to the Council of State, i. e.,
      again to the bureaucrats. It is only a flimsy annexe to the bureaucratic
      and police edifice. The public are not admitted to sittings of the State
      Duma. Reports on the proceedings of the State Duma may be published in the
      press only when its sittings are not heldin camera; any session
    may be closed, however, by an official order, which means that the Minister
    has merely to qualify the matter under consideration as a state secret.

Thenew State Duma is the same old Russian police station, only on a larger
scale. The rich landlord and capitalist manufacturer (on rare occasions, a rich
peasant) are admitted for “consultation” to the “open”
Sittings of the police station (or the Rural Superintendent, or factory
inspector, etc.); they always have the right to submit their opinion for the
“gracious attention” of the Emperor... I mean, the police
inspector. As for “the common people”, the city workers and the
rural poor, it goes without saying that they are never admitted to any kind of
“consultation” whatever.

Theonly difference is that there are many police stations and everything in
them is kept out of sight, whereas there is only one State Duma, and it has now
become necessary to publish the rules governing its election and the extent of
its rights. Publication of this is, we repeat, in itself an excellent exposure
of the utter viciousness of the tsarist autocracy.

Fromthe standpoint of the people’s interests the State Duma is the most
barefaced mockery of “popular representation”. And, as if to
emphasise this mockery we have, on top of this, such facts as Mr. Durnovo’s
speech, the arrest of Mr. Milyukov and Co., the scandalous statement made by
Mr. Sharapov. In his speech Mr. Durnovo, the new Governor General of Moscow, who
is being rapturously hailed by the reactionary press, blurted out the real plans
of the government, which, besides the August 6 Manifesto and the State Duma
Act, issued an ukase on the same day, revoking the “ukase to the
Senate” of February 18, 1905. The ukase of February 18 permitted private
individuals to work out projects and propositions designed to improve
organisation of the state. Zemstvo members and representatives of theintelligentsia appealed to this ukase whenever they held meetings, conferences,
and congresses tolerated by the police. Now this ukase has been revoked, and all
“projects and propositions designed to improve organisation of the
state” must be “submitted” to the autocratic government
“according to the procedure provided for in establishing the State Duma”!
This means the end of agitation, the end of meetings, and congresses. There is a
State Duma; and there is nothing more to discuss. This is just what
Mr. Durnovo stated when he declared that they would no longer tolerate Zemstvo
congresses of any kind.

Theliberals of our “Constitutional-Democratic” (read: Monarchist)
Party find themselves duped again. They counted on a constitution, and now they
are forbidden to carry on any agitation for a constitution on the occasion of
the “granting” of an institution which makes a mockery of
constitution!

Mr.Sharapov has blurted out still more. In his government-subsidised paper
(Russkoye Dyelo) he suggests nothing less than the stationing ofCossacksin the palace where the Duma is to sit ... to provide against
the contingency of “unseemly” behaviour on the part of the Duma. The
oneness of the tsar and the people requires that the latter’s representatives
should speak and act as the tsar wishes. Otherwise the Cossacks will disperse
the Duma. Otherwise the members of the Duma may be arrested, even without the
assistance of the Cossacks, before they ever get into the Duma. The Manifesto on
the oneness of the tsar with the people appeared on Saturday, August 6. On
Sunday, August 7, Mr. Milyukov, one of the leaders of themoderatewing
of theOsvobozhdeniyeLeague or the
“Constitutional-Democratic” (read: Monarchist) Party, was arrested
near St. Petersburg, together with some ten of his political colleagues. They
are to be prosecuted for membership of the Union of Unions. In all probability
they will soon be released, but it will be an easy matter to shut the doors of
the Duma against them:

allthat is needed is to announce that they are “under court
investigation”...!

TheRussian people are getting their first little lessons in
constitutionalism. All these laws on the elections of popular representatives
are not worth a brass farthing until the sovereignty of the people hasactually been wonandthere is complete freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and association, until
      citizens are armed and are able to safeguard the inviolability of the
      person. We have said above that the State Duma is a mockery of popular
      representation. That is undoubtedly so from the standpoint of the theory
      of thesovereignty of the people.But this theory is recognised
    neither by the autocratic government nor by the monarchist-liberal
    bourgeoisie (theOsvobozhdeniyeLeague or the
    Constitutional-Monarchist Party). In present-day Russia we have before usthreepolitical theories, of whose significance we shall yet speak
    on more than one occasion. These are: 1) The theory of the tsar’sconsultationwith the people (or “the oneness of the tsar and
    the people, and of the people and the tsar”, as it is put in the
    Manifesto of August 6). 2) The theory of anagreementbetween the
    tsar and the people (the programme of theOsvobozhdeniyeLeague and
    the Zemstvo Congress). 3) The theory of thesovereignty of the
      people(the programme of Social-Democracy, as well as of
    revolutionary democracy in general).

Fromthe standpoint of theconsultationtheory it is quite natural that
the tsar should consult only those he wishes to, and only by the methods he
wishes. The State Duma is a splendid object lesson showing whom the tsar wants
to consult and how. From the standpoint of the theory of anagreement,
the tsar is not subject to the will of the people; he must only take it into
account. But how he is to take it into account and to what extent, cannot be
gathered from theOsvobozhdeniyetheory of “agreement”, and
whilst power is in the tsar’s hands theOsvobozhdeniyebourgeoisie is
inevitably condemned to the wretched position of a cadger, or a go-between, who
would use the people’s victories against the people. From the angle of thesovereignty of the peoplefull freedom of agitation and election should
first be secured in practice, and then a really popular constituent assembly
convened, i.e., an assembly elected by universal and equal suffrage, direct
elections, and secret ballot, and endowed with complete power—full,
integral, and indivisible power— an assembly which will actually express
the sovereignty of the people.

Thisbrings us to our slogan of agitation (the slogan of the R.S.D.L.P.) on the
State Duma. Who can really guaranteefreedom of elections and full power to a constituent assembly? Only the
armed people, organised in arevolutionary army, which has won over to
its side all decent and honest elements in the tsar’s army, has overcome the
tsar’s forces and substituted aprovisional revolutionary governmentfor the tsar’s autocratic government. The setting up of the State Duma, which,
on the one hand, “lures” the people with the idea of a
representative form of government, and, on the other hand, is the crudest
counterfeit of popular representation, will prove an inexhaustible source of the
most widespread revolutionary agitation among the masses, will serve as an
excellent occasion for meetings, demonstrations, political strikes, etc. The
slogan for all this agitation will be: insurrection, the immediate formation of
combat squads and contingents of a revolutionary army, the overthrow of tsarist
rule, and the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government which is
to convene a popular constituent assembly. The timing of the uprising will
depend, of course, on local conditions. We can only state that, generally
speaking, it is now in the interests of t he revolutionary proletariat to put
off somewhat the timing of an uprising: the workers are being armed gradually,
the troops are becoming more and more unreliable, the war crisis is reaching its
climax (war or an onerous peace), and in such conditions premature attempts at
insurrection may cause enormous harm.

Inconclusion, it remains for us to draw a comparison between the tactical
slogan briefly outlined above, and other slogans. As we have already stated inProletary, No. 12, our slogan coincides with what the majority of the
comrades working in Russia understand by the term “active
boycott”. The tactics ofIskra, which in its No. 106 recommended
the immediate setting up of revolutionary self-government bodies and election by
the people of their own representatives as a possible prologue to an uprising,
is absolutely erroneous. So long as the forces for an armed uprising and its
victory are still lacking, it is ridiculous even to speak of revolutionary
people’s self-government. That is not the prologue to an uprising, but its
epilogue. Such erroneous tactics would merely play into the hands of theOsvobozhdeniyebourgeoisie, in the first place by obscuring or shelving
theslogan of an uprising, and replacing it with the slogan of the organisation of
      revolutionary self-government. In the second place, it would make it
      easier for the liberal bourgeois to representtheir(Zemstvo and
    municipal) elections as popular elections, since there can be no popular
    elections so long as the tsar retains power, and the liberals may yet
    succeed in carrying out Zemstvo and municipal elections despite
    Mr. Durnovo’s threats.

Theproletariat has been barred from the Duma elections. Actually, the
proletariat has no need to boycott the Duma, since by its very institution this
tsarist Duma is itself boycotting the proletariat. It is to the proletariat’s
advantage, however, to support that section of the bourgeois democrats which is
inclined to prefer revolutionary action to haggling, and which favours
boycotting the Duma and more intensive agitation among the people for a protest
against this Duma. The proletariat must not pass over in silence this first
betrayal or inconsistency on the part of the bourgeois democrats, which is
expressed in the fact that their representatives talk of boycotting the Duma (at
the July Zemstvo Congress the first voting even showed amajorityin
favour of a boycott), utter pompous phrases about appealing to the people and
not to the tsar (Mr. I. Petrunkevich at that same Congress), whereas in reality
they are prepared to over look this new flouting of the people’s demands,
without making a protest in the real sense of the word or giving it wide
publicity, and to abandon the idea of a boycott and enter the Duma. The
proletariat cannot but refute. the false phrases that are now so much in vogue
in articles published in the legal liberal press (see, for instance,Rusof August 7), which has entered the fray against the idea of a
boycott. The gentlemen of the liberal press are corrupting the people with their
assurances that the peaceful path, a “peaceful clash of opinions”
is possible (why is it that Milyukov could not struggle “peacefully”
against Sharapov, gentlemen, why?). The gentlemen of the liberal press are
deceiving the people when they declare that the Zemstvos “can to a certain
extent [I] paralyse [!! I the pressure which will, undoubtedly, be brought to
bear on the peasant electors by the Rural Superintendents and by the local
authorities in general”. (Rus, loc. cit.) The liberal journalists
are whollydistorting the role of the State Duma in the Russian revolution, when they
compare it with the Prussian. Chamber of the period of the budget conflict with
Bismarck (1863). Actually, if one is to make a comparison at all, one must take
as an example not a constitutional period but a period of struggle for a
constitution, a period of incipient revolution. To do otherwise means to skip
directly from a period when the bourgeoisie is revolutionary into a period when
the bourgeoisie has made its peace with reaction. (cf.Proletary, No. 5
on the comparison drawn between our Messrs. Petrunkeviches and
Mr. Andrássy,
“once a revolutionary” and subsequently a

			      Minister.[2])

The State
Duma brings to mind the Prussian “United Landtag” (Diet) established
on February 3,1847, one year before the revolution. The Prussian
liberals of those days were also preparing—although they never
actually got round to it—to boycott this
consultative chamber of landlords, and were asking the people:
“Annehmen oder ablehnen?” (“Accept or
Decline?”—the title of a pamphlet by Heinrich Simon, a
bourgeois liberal, which was published in 1847.)  The Prussian United
Landtag met (the first session was opened on April 11, 1847, and
closed on June 26, 1847) and gave rise to a series of clashes between
the constitutionalists and the autocratic government; nevertheless it
remained a lifeless institution, untilthe revolutionary people,
headed by the proletariat of Berlin, defeated the royal army in
theuprising of March 18, 1848. Then the State Duma... I mean
the United Landtag—went up in smoke. An assembly of people’s
representatives was then convened (unfortunately not by a
revolutionary government but by the king, whom the heroic workers of
Berlin had “not finished off”) on the basis of universal
suffrage with relative freedom to carry on agitation.

Letthe bourgeois betrayers of the revolution enter this still-born State
Duma. The proletariat of Russia will intensify its agitation and its
preparations for our Russian March 18, 1848 (or better still, August 10, 1792).

[1]See pp. 179-87 of this volume.—Ed.

[2]See present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 526-30.—Ed.

[3]Marshal of theNobility—the elected representative of the
nobility of a gubernia or uyezd, who was in charge of all the nobles’
    affairs in the area represented. He held a position of influence in the
    administration, and took the chair at Zemstvo meetings.